Ebola can be beaten by the end of 2015 says UN mission head

Months of hard work lie ahead but the world can stamp out the Ebola outbreak in West Africa by the end of the year according to the outgoing chief of the
United Nations body battling the deadly virus.

The UN’s Ebola Emergency Response mission or UNMEER was set up in September to coordinate global efforts.

“Given where we started 90 days ago, given where the predictions were of what we might be facing, I think we have to say that the global response to the Ebola crisis has been extremely successful during this past 90 days,” UNMEER boss Anthony Banbury told reporters in Ghana.

It wasn’t all positive.

Banbury acknowledged that targets on safe burials, for example, had not been met and that a “long and difficult” path lay ahead.

Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia have borne the brunt of more than 20,000 cases of Ebola globally and nearly 8,000 deaths.